Sunday, August 17, 2014

That Spider--Yet Again!

August 17, 2014

Dear friends,

The last two weeks have brought much joy and many things
to think about. Writing about these new things must wait, however, for another
day. Today’s space belongs to unfinished business with that spider that I watched
take down a web, and—Patience, please! Don’t
go away!—a postscript to the Chicken Little Story.

That early morning as I watched the spider, I was
intrigued at what I was seeing—in a business-like fashion the spider was disassembling a web. This was a new
experience--I hadn’t seen a spider unweave a web before. As I thought about the
experience, I concluded that the small brown spider I had observed was a neat
and tidy soul (perhaps a bit OCD, spider-fashion) and was demolishing an old
web that was no longer useful.

What I experienced was real—the spider and the web and
the spider’s behavior were not figments of an aging imagination. Lack of a
sense of reality was not the problem. Nevertheless, like Chicken Little, the initial
meaning I attached to my experience was incorrect. I eventually discovered my mistake
although this required considerable thinking and a great many questions.

When I thought about the unweaving spider in the context
of my life experiences, the questions began to rise. In years of housekeeping,
why had there been so many cobwebs to remove from ceilings and light fixtures?
Why was it that, inevitably, on a trip to the attic or the cellar, at some
place on the journey I would find myself wiping my face to remove traces of a spider
web that, unnoticed, I had walked into? I had regularly come into contact with spider
webs on trips to the well house and the barn. In the garden I had often seen
diamonds of dew caught in their fragile nets. In my rather long history there
had truly been countless numbers of spiders and spider webs. How did this fact
fit into my understanding of the unweaving spider?

On that morning on the porch had I observed a rare
event, an anomaly—had I actually seen the only tidy spider in the universe, the
only recorded case of spider OCD? Were all those other webs I had encountered
the abandoned webs of ecologically irresponsible spiders who had simply moved
on and left their trash behind?

Put that way, my first conclusion seemed highly
doubtful. Something certainly had happened—I had indeed seen that spider sever
three of the anchoring threads to that sorry-looking web between the porch and
the barberry bush. But was my conclusion
valid—was that spider cleaning up the place, picking up web trash, removing an
old building from an old lot? Or was there another explanation?

And, to reconsider the spider: it was a very small
spider, brown and totally unremarkable in every way.

And suppose I reconsidered that ragged, irregular,
shabby-looking web?

What if this was not a garbage collection story after all?

What
if the unattractive appearance of that web was the result of an inadequate
first effort at spinning? What if I had seen a spider dealing with a failed first
effort?

What if I had seen a story about learning, a story in
which the pattern did not come right the first time, a story in which not only
did the pattern fail to come right the first time but the sorry first effort at
spinning was not anchored in a safe place?

It is possible that I saw a spider disassembling the results of a poor first choice, then setting off to
find a safer place in which to weave again.

Comforted today to think—again—with you about the gift
of choice.

Finding an acorn instead of a piece of fallen sky can
leave us feeling foolish. However, like that small brown spider, we can accept the
loss of bad beginnings and chose to weave again. To do so sometimes requires that
we detach unstable anchors and clean up the debris in order to move on to build better in a safer place.

I wonder: were some of the most intricate,
beautiful spider webs I’ve seen a second effort at spinning?

I know that some of the most beautiful lives
I’ve seen are the result of people who with great courage have begun again—and again—and,
for some, yet again.